John Stuart Mill Quotes

John
Stuart Mill was a great believer in, and defender of
freedom, especially that of speech and of thought.

Mill argued that society's utility would
be maximized if each person was free to make his/her own choices and
that freedom was necessary for a
person's development.

Among his most well-known works are A System of
Logic, Principles of Political
Economy, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women
and Three Essays on Religion.

The Quotes

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions
but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to
them for the injury.

A man who has nothing for which he is
willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal
safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent
in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the
prevention of pain.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and
preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who
only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is
true that most stupid people are conservative.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than
in attempting to satisfy them.

Those only are happy … who have their minds fixed on some object other
than their own happiness.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render
mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be
civilized.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be
called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the
injunctions of men.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they
affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that
the sheltered and protected can never experience.

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have
only interests.

It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the
leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both
sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what
they denied.

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great
mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the
word, as a wife is.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use
of.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true,
but seldom or never the whole truth.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human
advancement.

The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from
is routine.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own
good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized
until personal experience has brought it home.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing
is worth war is much worse.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability
to act according to their beliefs.

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often
becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where
strength of character has abounded; and the amount of
eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount
of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained.

No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great
change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their
modes of thought.

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the
benefit.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing
is worth a war, is much worse.

Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.

Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot
get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its
enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at
ease, we must even partake its character.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are
both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other
woman.